Responsible Conduct of Research

Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR)

The Center for Bioethics’ Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) Course is primarily restricted to post doctoral trainees working within Quad-based, Harvard Medical School faculty laboratories.

To view and register for RCR, sign-up via the Harvard Training Portal.

The course is designed to run as a graduate-style seminar. Each session will be co-facilitated by the course director, research faculty, and administrative deans. This course is meant to provide an opportunity to openly and critically reflect with your peers and others about what responsibility and integrity should mean to the professional scientific community. To that end, you will be expected to have done the readings prior to class and you will be expected to participate in discussion.

We are not able to accommodate requests from Harvard teaching hospital clinical trainees. Exceptions may be considered on an individual basis and can depend on the trainee’s primary funding source. Hospital administrators should look to their own institutions for RCR offerings. Some resources are listed below.

If you do not have a Harvard ID and need to register, email RCR@hms.harvard.edu.

NIH Training Requirements

NIH Institutional Research Training Grants, Individual Fellowship Awards, Career Development Awards (Institutional and Individual), Research Education Grants, Dissertation Research Grants, or Other Grant Programs

Effective January 2010, the NIH has substantially revised its expectations for what constitutes adequate RCR training. Learn more here.

We have adapted our long-standing course to meet these new guidelines. Most importantly, NIH now requires attendance at 8 of the 9 sessions in order to receive a certificate of completion. We recognize most trainees will have an occasional scheduling conflict, and accordingly, we expect individuals to take no longer than 2 years to complete the class coursework. NIH has also discouraged one-day seminar formats to fulfill this training requirement, so no such course will be offered.

Members of the HMS community on an NIH-sponsored training grant must receive compulsory education in the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR). If you have received RCR training in the past 3 years and can demonstrate the same (typically through the possession of a certificate), you may be relieved from fulfilling this requirement. If you have not completed the training, then you are strongly encouraged to enroll in the course conducted under the auspices of the Center for Bioethics within Harvard Medical School.

Program History and Overview

The Program in the Practice of Scientific Investigation (PPSI) was established in 1990 by the Division of Medical Ethics to provide education in the responsible conduct of research for post-doctoral research fellows. In 1999, Dean Joseph B. Martin mandated completion of the PPSI for all post-doctoral fellows working in laboratories in the Harvard Medical School Quad, regardless of funding source. The PPSI offers education in the responsible conduct of research to all post-doctoral fellows working in HMS labs.

Topics covered in any yearly cycle will include:

• The scientist as a responsible member of society, contemporary ethical issues in biomedical research
• The environmental and societal impacts of scientific research
• Resilience and inclusion in academic research
• Conflicts of interest – personal, professional, and financial
• Mentor/mentee responsibilities and relationships
• Collaborative research including collaborations with industry
• Data acquisition and laboratory tools – management, sharing, and ownership
• Research misconduct and policies for handling misconduct
• Responsible authorship and publication
• Peer review